


Guild of Awesome

by darthneko



Series: Universal Constant [1]
Category: Transformers - All Media Types, World of Warcraft
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, Cohort Dynamics, Cybertronians Playing Games, Don't Examine This Too Closely, Dorks, Gen, Headcanon, Humor, I Can't Believe I Wrote This, Meta, Now With Pictures!, Other, Role-Playing Game, Roleplay, Slice of Life, So much headcanon, This Is How We Roll, self indulgent, short scenes
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-05-31
Updated: 2013-05-31
Packaged: 2017-12-13 13:26:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/824800
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/darthneko/pseuds/darthneko
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When your entire species ISN'T in an eternal civil war there's more downtime for soldiers - and the last thing anyone wants is a bored soldier. Enter the leisure time activities... like gaming.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Something Blue

**Author's Note:**

  * For [DragovianKnight](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DragovianKnight/gifts).



> The flowchart-in-a-nutshell of how this came about:
> 
> 1) I played Ironhide in a TFPrime RP, the same game DragovianKnight played Shadow in.
> 
> 2) Ironhide and Shadow met in-game and fell into a joint gravity well over guns, explosions, snuggles, and being dorks.
> 
> 3) The background of the RP has both of them coming from different multi-member cohort squadrons that operated as tight-knit but mostly isolated micro family communities _(Ironhide's 12th Guardian squadron and Shadow's Lucky Thirteen)._
> 
> 4) Dragovian enticed me into playing World of Warcraft.
> 
> 5) We both name all of our characters for members of our respective mobs of OCs in the squadrons. Said OCs developed their own personalities after awhile in our shared headcanon.
> 
> 6) We gave up and created the Guild of Awesome (aka The Guardians of Cybertron - Alliance guild on Velen).
> 
> 7) Drabbles happened.
> 
> * * * * *

_::You have to SEE this.::_

Wildstrike's comm, broadcast on personal channels, was layered in far too many underlying glyphs of amusement and a youngling-like enthusiasm entirely at odds with his rank - but not to the mechanisms who knew him - to even pretend it was work related. Ironhide  reflexively pinged a location pulse but their captain was, exactly as the duty roster specified, on the command deck. Unless something unusual and entertaining had unexpectedly shown up in the depths of space, which was more likely to have prompted a shipwide announcement backed by the others on duty, then it was more likely the other mech's amusement had nothing to do with his work shift.

Which left half a dozen possibilities to guess his way through and Ironhide was still pinging the data load measures on the relevant channels when Breaker, who was sat at the table across from him, chin pillowed on his crossed arms as his optics flickered through an entertainment vid he was watching, vented a low note of disbelief. "Are you playing THAT again?" the elder mech asked, aloud and on comms, glyphs sketching indulgent shapes. "Thought you were on duty, youngling."

 _::Duty's boring,::_ Wildstrike shot back flippantly. _::We're five point two rotations out from system, this patrol leg's been quiet for vorn, and there's nothing out here but black. Really, you have to SEE this. Isn't it great?::_

'This' was accompanied, that time, by a live video feed of the game Wildstrike was playing, a peculiar organic based simulation that they had picked up along with several others of assorted types simply because it was both expansive and also low-yield against their data loads, making running the system aboard ship an easy thing. Despite the 'War' in the title it had little to do with either the creating organic race's actual level of warfare or any accurate sort of tactics or training simulation. The algorhythms that dictated the game were ridiculously simple but those of the squad who played it - including Ironhide and Breaker - usually turned off their readout of the underlying mathematics involved and tried to play it as the organics did; as nothing but colorful graphics and a simplistically limited control set.

The 'this' that they were being directed to look at was Wildstrike's avatar, which was sporting more color then normal. Ironhide paused the careful adjustments he was doing to the gun mount spread out on the table in front of him, eyeing the simplified graphics of the game on his internal feed. "Is that one of those... whatever you call them, the things their femmes wear?"

 _::It's a KILT,::_ Wildstrike replied gleefully, glyphs accompanying the organic concept-form to indicate universal or mech-acceptable in the originating xeno culture. _::It's BLUE, and it's a kilt, and it's better looking than anything we've found so far.::_

"It's smelter scrap," Breaker corrected in an undertone to Ironhide, a private ping transmitting the mathematical defense statistics of the item in question according to the game database, "but it's _blue_ so Primus help us all we're probably never getting him out of it."


	2. Favorites

"Alright," Breaker had said, settling his heavy bulk down beside Ironhide, "You've been over here every downshift for the last two decacycles. Time you show me what has you two bitlets so wrapped up in it."

Ironhide vented in a huff. "Not a bitlet," was the reflexive response, but he shifted around to let his back rest against the larger mech.

"You're all bitlets to me," Breaker assured him, not for the first time. His arm slid around Ironhide's shoulders as Wildstrike, with no ceremony, climbed across the both of them to shove up against Breaker's other side, sandwiching him between them. "Up to no good, or just playing?"

"Playing," Wildstrike answered, tugging at Breaker's other arm to situate the larger mech to his own liking for resting against. "New game, multiplayer - 'Hide's idea."

"So show me," Breaker said, and it was all easy piloting from there, both of them taking turns to send him the necessary files, patch him into the right data line, and walk him through the beginning of the game. The elder mech was rarely deeply invested in any of the games the squad picked up, but he could be counted on as a solid if part-time player for most of them, more for want of spending off-duty time with his cohort then for any of the games themselves.

_::Peculiar variety of organics,::_ was his first comment, but he picked the same heavy framed species Ironhide and Wildstrike had chosen. After a little while spent fussing with colorization and styling of the avatar - "You're not grey," Wildstrike had pointed out, to which Breaker had observed that the game didn't provide the colors most Cybertronian frames came in and besides, didn't the vast majority of mammalian organics turn a more grey color with age? - it was a crash course in simplistic left/right/forward/backwards up/down directional controls and the single option for attack as Breaker worked through the tutorial stages of the game.

By the time he was halfway through the beginning stage - "They're living on a sparked habitat - are you sure organics thought this up?" - Breaker had acquired defensive gear for his avatar that both Wildstrike and Ironhide were attempting not to be jealous of; something about his function class requiring better grade plating which happened to come in a startlingly perfect shade of red and gold that matched the elder mech's actual chassis.

"You'll have to get better," Wildstrike warned him dolefully, "and they're all ugly as scrap." Which did nothing to stop Breaker's rather smug pleasure as his avatar hacked and slashed his way through the remainder of the starting zone and out into the multi-player game proper.

From there it was one more round of instructions in repeatable quests and subsidiary specialization professions. "Fishing?" Breaker had asked dubiously.

"Catching non-sentient fluid cyclers," Ironhide had clarified. "Organics use them as fuel."

An unspoken glyph of patient exasperation tinged with mockery - something many of the Guard used when discussing organics - swirled through the elder mech's field but he obediently went through the steps to take the third tier specialization and complete the first task. The other two left him to it, splitting up to resume their own quests.

Until, several kliks later, when Breaker pinged them both with a query accompanied by image capture. _::What does this do?::_

"....You got a fishing hat," Wildstrike said, disbelief coloring his glyphs.

"It was in the payment reward for the task," Breaker told him, the larger mech's voice rumbling through both of their frames. "What does it do?"

"Makes it easier to fish," Ironhide replied. "Also, they're rare. It took me a long time to get one."

Wildstrike vented sharply, thunking his helm back against Breaker's shoulder plating. "Fishing hat," he repeated. "On his _first_ daily. Between that and the armor, this game _obviously_  has a favorite."


	3. Farming, Cybertronian Style

Ironhide had been the first one to pick the game up, looking for something that didn't professionally offend his specialty the way the more supposedly accurate simulation battle games did. He'd found it was popular, assorted hub nodes formed in the low-data long-distance feed lines across sectors, lots of mechanisms from different bases playing in the same organic based world. 

It would have been nothing but a passing fancy if he hadn't found someone to play _with_  - a femme, or at least her avatar was (not that this counted for much; Signal and Crossfire played with femme avatars as well and Ironhide could name handfuls of other Guardians who played simulation games with frame types or spark frequencies that had nothing to do with their actual current specs). She and the rest of hers, who he'd met over time, identified as a squad - thirteenth, though he'd yet to figure out which branch they were in. Military, certainly, but not Guard as he could rattle off all of the current roster of the Thirteenth Guard and none of them were named "Shadow".

They had yet to meet in frame and mesh - schedules mapped around solar systems and sectors and space stations being what they were - but it was always warming to tap into the game line and find Shadow's avatar flagged as online, a familiar voice he could reach out to with eagerness. _/Ah found an instance we can farm,/_ and it was only in comparison to her glyphs that he could SEE how his own were accented, but she had never derided him for it. _/Wildstrike's askin' fer that Netherweave scrap by th' ton./_

The response was immediate and enthusiastic and for all that his fellow playing cohortmates had varied demands in-game Ironhide never minded spending his off duty spans filling those demands. Not when it meant his avatar, along with Shadow's, could spend a few breems doing nothing but cheerfully killing everything in sight.

  
_(Ironhide and Shadow in the Blood Furnace instance in Hellfire Peninsula, Outland,_   
_which is an excellent place for farming Netherweave)_   



End file.
